McAfee sells its enterprise cybersecurity business to private equity firm for $4B

McAfee is selling its enterprise cybersecurity unit to Palo Alto-based private equity firm Symphony Technology Group in an all-cash deal worth $4 billion.

The sale comes just five months after McAfee went public on the Nasdaq, following a 10-year hiatus, though its shares have largely wallowed around their IPO price of $20. With this latest move, McAfee is positioning itself entirely as a consumer cybersecurity company, for which it is arguably already better known through products spanning antivirus and VPNs.

Despite its strong brand in the consumer realm, McAfee has always targeted businesses, and today it claims its enterprise unit is a “trusted partner” for 86% of Fortune 100 companies, generating $1.3 billion in net revenue for the full 2020 fiscal year.

Intel has continued to invest heavily in the enterprise since Intel spun it out as an independent entity back in 2017. Earlier this year, McAfee launched a new extended detection and response (XDR) tool for enterprise endpoint, cloud, and network protect, and last year it launched a new cloud-based security and information event management (SIEM) product designed to help security operations teams respond to threats.

Symphony Technology Group, for its part, is no stranger to acquiring legacy security brands, having shelled out more than $2 billion to buy RSA from Dell last year, so this latest deal is in keeping with its recent investment ethos.

The deal is anticipated to close by the end of 2021, and the unit is expected to be rebranded “in the coming months,” according to a press release.